How has Mubi’s SVOD platform developed in recent years, and how do they differentiate themselves from Netflix, Amazon Prime, and locally-oriented specialist platforms? Roderik Smits discusses Mubi’s business model and explains why they are now trying to break in to the distribution business.
Promoting film culture
Mubi started in 2007 as an information-sharing platform which introduced quality auteur films to an online audience of cinephiles.

Roderik Smits has published a new article on Dutch distributors in the film distribution business for the journal Poetics.
Here is the abstract:
Gatekeeping studies in the cultural industries increasingly draw attention to transnational networks, revealing that decision-making is decentralised through gatekeepers operating from different levels in the marketplace. This brings into focus a new line of enquiry revolving around the nature of such relationships.

Distribution windows for films are evolving rapidly, challenging traditional release strategies. How are different types of films affected by such change? Roderik Smits considers the changes taking place within the UK theatrical market.
The theatrical release window has for many years been talked up as the “engine that drives the ancillary sales”, giving films an afterlife on secondary windows or platforms, such as streaming services (through forms of online VOD releasing), ...

Nathan Townsend reports from the UK Film Distribution: What’s Changing? event, organised by MeCETES and Creative Europe Desk UK at the Regent Street Cinema, London, 13 June 2016.
Few conferences have such an unambiguous title, and the programme succeeded in exploring what it says on the tin, albeit with a more diverse range of European input than the headline suggested.

MeCETES and Creative Europe Desk UK present:
UK Film Distribution: What’s Changing?
A one-day event on the changing nature of UK film distribution
12-5pm, Monday 13 June 2016
Regent Street Cinema, London W1B 2UW
Film distribution is changing. The traditional windowing model, whereby films open exclusively in cinemas before they are introduced to the home video market, and thereafter on television, is being undermined by new release strategies.

On behalf of the MeCETES York team, Roderik Smits will debate the changing nature of the film distribution business at the Film Expo South industry event in Southampton on 4 February 2016.
Roderik Smits in conversation with sales agents and distributors at the MeCETES industry event at the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen on 9 September 2015.
Roderik will be accompanied by Michael Ryan (GFM Films), Mark Vennis (MovieHouse Pictures) and Steve ...

With the rapid rise of the on-line video market, arrangements between sales agents, distributors, content aggregators and digital providers are changing dramatically, writes Roderik Smits.
The field of film distribution has historically been reshaped by technological change. In particular, the rapid development of the satellite and cable television market and the home video market in the 1980s had a dramatic effect on the business in terms of financing, production and distribution ...

Media industry players gathered in Ostend for the ‘Making Film and Television Drama’ conference on September 18, 2014. Huw Jones reports on the MeCETES-organised industry event. With additional input from Roderik Smits.
European film and television dramas need characters audiences can identify with if they are to travel, former Head of DR Fiction, Ingolf Gabold, told an international gathering of media industry professionals in Ostend, Belgium.
Speaking at the

The first findings of the MeCETES project were presented at the NECS 2014 Conference held at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, on June 19, 2014.
Representatives from all three partner institutions presented their research at a special MeCETES panel entitled: “Creative Europe: Transnational Patterns of Film and Television Production and Distribution”.
Ilse Schooneknaep from Vrije Universiteit Brussels discussed whether European audiovisual support systems such as

Roderik Smits outlines his PhD research on the ‘gatekeeping’ roles of acquisition scouts, sales agents and distributors within the film distribution business.
Gatekeeping roles of acquisition scouts, sales agents and distributors in the film distribution business
There has been much discussion in film and media studies recently about how to research industry. Here I want to offer my own insights on investigating ‘gatekeepers’ – e.g.